Snow and home again.

"No wiser now 
Than the spellbound child
who first beheld beguiled, 
Long seventy years ago
Enchanted snow."

                                               Enchanted Snow 
                                          Melville Cane

After mentioning that there was little snow, it snowed on Jan. 5th, the day before we were heading back to Calgary.

Then winter arrived with a vengeance. I sent this email to my family on Jan. 12th.

"We are okay. We had to go out for a minor medical errand this afternoon. The temp registered outside the cab, we made no attempt to start the car, was -35. That was not the wind chill. I did do a bit on the walk this morning and I said to Helen it was about as cold as I could ever remember. Nina and Whateley are only out for a minute or so but sometimes Nina limps in and has to be carried up the steps from the landing."


But it is supposed to warm up on the weekend.

Last night we had a lovely supper and visit with family

 

“Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.

Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies

like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,

some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,

snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn

back into the little system of his care.

All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,

tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.”

Ted Kooser, Flying At Night: Poems 1965-1985

After all, time is not money. It is an opportunity to live before you die. Donald Culross Peattie

 

On the nine hour drive from Calgary to Central Saskatchewan on Dec. 29th we saw almost no snow. The fields were mostly bare the entire way. Given that we had watering restrictions right up to Nov. in Calgary and only two small snowfalls in Calgary from mid Oct to Christmas it has been an incredibly dry fall and winter. The bit snow at the farm is way below average and the temperatures unseasonably warm.

 

The pages above are from A Book Of Hours by Donald Culross Peattie, 

Decorations by Land Ward, 1937. The book was a Christmas gift from my brother. 

At the farm Christmas 2023

                                                     

"When the great wind comes

and the robberies of the rain

you stand on the corner shivering.

The people who go by—

you wonder at their calm.

They miss the whisper that runs

any day in your mind,

“Who are you really, wanderer?”—

and the answer you have to give

no matter how dark and cold

the world around you is:

“Maybe I’m a king.”"

from A Story That Could Be True

by William Stafford

https://poetry.princeton.edu/2010/01/05/a-story-that-could-be-true/

A photo from our trip to the farm at Christmas

"I've learnt the beatitudes of ice,

something sacred, something cold,

demanding respect, a paraphernalia

of horned boots, cowl and padded vest,

for body nicely flexed to winter's mould."

From Shovel to Self-propelled Blower:

The Immigrant's Progress

Reinzi Crusz

Photos, Canadian Poets and the image of the farm

Ten miles from anywhere eighty years and more,
Where the frozen roadstones grind iron shoes and tires
     And the timberwood’s last stand
Lives only in brushwood and long memories,―see,
The new-peeled posts are marching, the taut wires
     Sing to the naked land,

Sing to the valley of slash and beaver-meadow,
The stone-pocked fields and bog-born stunted alders
     And the black hills rising sheer
As mountains of iron and sand round the Genie’s castle
(The age-old view of eyes that each November
     Look back on a wasted year)

from Gentleman's Farm 

by John Glassco

Clouds

One thing I love about being at the farm and especially at our cabin just up the grid is the sky. Clouds and the weather in general just fascinate me. So here are some photos taken at the farm the night before we left to return to Calgary. 

"There is no thunder in her hair,
upon her lips no rain,
yet world and weather through that door
have come alive again,"

from Six Songs from a Play, First Song
by Patrick Anderson

Tree Swallow at the farm and the open road

"Live with me on Earth among red berries and the bluebirds
And leafy young twigs whispering
Within such little spaces, between such floors of green, such
     figures in the clouds
That two of us could fill our lives with delicate wanting:"

from Live with me on earth under the invisible daylight moon

by Milton Acorn

The farm

   “I farm a little plot of things to say, with not much frontage on the busy road.”

     —Ted Kooser journal entry, December 7, 1972

Vulture at the farm

"Cocked in that land tactile as leaves

wild things wait crouched in those valleys

west of your city outside your lives

in the ultimate wind, the whole land's wave. 

Come west and see; touch these leaves." 

from Midwest

by William Stafford

Swallows at the farm

What astonished you?

The swallows making their dip and turn over the water.

What would you like to see again?

My dog: her energy and exuberance, her willingness,
her language beyond all nimbleness of tongue,
her recklessness, her loyalty, her sweetness,

from Gratitude
Mary Oliver

To keep everyone safe it does not look like we will visit the farm or cabin anytime soon

“The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.”
― Henry Beston (Northern Farm)

If your looking for a book to read I recommend Beston's
The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod

And stay safe.

Today (The First House Xmas 2019)

“Without noticing, I slip into a light yet lingering malaise. Not a depression, more like a fascination for melancholia, which I turn in my hand as if it were a small planet, streaked in shadow, impossibly blue.”

Patti Smith

December Deer

"I have come a long way
without arriving
torn songs up

from the roots of weeds
but made no 
silence sing:

climbed the peak but
found no foothold
higher than the ground"

from Return
by A. R. Ammons

Cows in the snow

" We turn into winter;

when the next spring comes we will melt until

we run like rivers down the high green hill."

from We are sitting on a high green hill

by Gwendolyn MacEwen

Caragana and Tansy by the old house.

Caragana and Tansy grow by the door of the old house Helen lived in until she was about eight. In the past both were valued bacause they would grow in the harsh environment of the Canadian Prairies. Now this ability to flourish in these conditions means they are considered weed species because they spread if not rigourously checked.

“And I told him that a man's life is always dealing with permanence - that the most dangerous kind of irresponsibility is to think of your doings as temporary. That, anyhow, is what I've tried to keep before myself. What you do on the earth, the earth makes permanent.”

from A Place on Earth
by Wendell Berry

From Kindling, poems and other work, Wednesday, August 10, 2011

I went for a walk

way out beyond the far fields

clouds followed me home.

                                    Guy

The old house

"And who over the ruins of his life pursued its fleeting, fluttering significance, while he suffered its seeming meaninglessness and lived its seeming madness, and who hoped in secret at the last turn of the labyrinth of Chaos for revelation and God’s presence?"

Hesse, Hermann. Steppenwolf 

The Farm in Summer

I have put together some wintery posts for the next couple of weeks while they see to my cataracts. 

But before that let's have see summer for everyone that is just a wee bit tired of the snow and cold, the flowers in Helen's mom's garden at the farm, one of my favourite places. 

And another favourite, a farmey (sp)  poem.

Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
     The night above the dingle starry,
          Time let me hail and climb
     Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
          Trail with daisies and barley
     Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
     In the sun that is young once only,
          Time let me play and be 
     Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
          And the sabbath rang slowly
     In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
     And playing, lovely and watery
          And fire green as grass.
     And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
     Flying with the ricks, and the horses
          Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
     Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
          The sky gathered again
     And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
     Out of the whinnying green stable
          On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
     In the sun born over and over,
          I ran my heedless ways,
     My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
     Before the children green and golden
          Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
     In the moon that is always rising,
          Nor that riding to sleep
     I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
          Time held me green and dying
     Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

The Old House

“But you—are you the one . . . ?”

Then the line will be gone

because both ends will be home:

no space, no birds, no farm.

My self will be the plain,

wise as winter is gray,

pure as cold posts go

pacing toward what I know.

from Farm on the Great Plains

by William Stafford